Dr. McNeil has a passion for providing care to complex, underserved patients – the focus of DMHC’s pioneering practice. “I want to work where I’m needed and appreciated,” says McNeil. “I always thought my highest contribution would be in academia, but DMHC changed my perspective. It gives me the opportunity to take on new challenges while also achieving a better balance between professional and personal commitments – a goal that was particularly important to me at this point in my career,” she admits. “I can even continue my teaching activities, thanks to the cooperative arrangement Dr. Alan Kronhaus, the CEO of DMHC, worked out with the Chair of my Department at UNC.”
A Triangle native, Dr. McNeil did her undergraduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, then continued at Wake Forest University for medical school and her residency. Consistent with her zeal for scholarship, Dr. McNeil also completed a Neuro-Oncology Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. With this outstanding training and Board Certification in Neurology and Psychiatry, Dr. McNeil accepted a prestigious faculty appointment at Wake Forest University, where she also directed the Outpatient Neurology Department.
After living in Winston-Salem for five years, Dr. McNeil decided it was time to come home. In 2006, she accepted a faculty appointment in the Department of Neurology at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she became heavily involved in teaching neuroscience to medical students and neuropathology to residents, while supervising clinical activity in the outpatient neurology clinic.
In recognition of her teaching accomplishments, Dr. McNeil was awarded the Hyman Battle Teaching Award and the Neurology Resident Teaching Award in 2010. When she announced her decision to join Doctors Making Housecalls, her Department Chair cajoled her into continuing her teaching activities by promoting her to Associate Clinical Professor. Dr. McNeil is delighted to be able to keep one foot in academia while spending the majority of her time seeing patients as the Neurology Consultant to DMHC’s 23 primary care clinicians.
According to Dr. Kronhaus, “having Dr. McNeil on our clinical team will enhance our status as the nation’s “gold standard” in home medical care. It will also improve our ability to bring the best medicine has to offer to our patient’s in their own environment. By improving access to such high-quality care,” Kronhaus continues, “we can function in a more proactive, prevention-oriented fashion, instead of reacting when a patient deteriorates.”
Dr. McNeil cherishes the time she spends with her husband and two young children at home as well, but also needs to be practicing medicine. “There’s nothing more important to me than family, but I have to be taking care of patients to feel truly fulfilled.”
